


The Ill-Made Knight

by Sotano



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Excalibur Vol. 4 (2004), Genosha, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 22:55:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28625319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sotano/pseuds/Sotano
Summary: "Alone, Magneto or I probably could have destroyed Karima, and very likely could have killed the magistrates. Violence and destruction come easy. But together, we've found a better way. That paradigm may work as well for a nation as for a person," Charles said, and Erik's gaze shot back to him at the reference to TH White.Once, long ago, they'd read The Once and Future King together, and Erik saw himself in Lancelot. The bad man, for whom violence is all too easy, can strive to be good, and this makes him a good person. The nation can resist its call to violence, if Lancelot can. Erik looked pained for a moment, and then a hard set came to his jaw. He looked at Charles with a reverence that almost scared him."Will you help?" Charles asked the mutants gathered atop a bombed-out Genosha. That night, they began to build something in the ruins.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. Homo Sapiens Superior and their relative design flaws

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Excalibur (2004) and by based on I mean it follows the events of Excalibur (2004) and changes a few insignificant details here and there, adds some emotional honesty. Title's from The Once and Future King. and yes the knight is Magneto.

Charles had been straining himself, lugging the coffin across the island. He was tired and the mental scans he'd been doing were stretching his powers. He hadn't realized how reliant he'd become on Cerebro. The mental scans also revealed the true extent of the pain that Genosha had suffered. So few left. So _few_ , under the watchful eye of the metal sculpture of Magneto. Molded out of the side of the sculpture, in an act of protest, was Charles' own face, and on the other side a Sentinel. The dream, the pain, and the revolutionary. Now he and Erik looked on in apparent horror, and the Sentinel's face remained unchanged. It was an awful, horrible piece of art, but then again, Charles tended to think so even before the bombs.

But the bombs had come, and Cassandra Nova was to blame, another knife in Charles' heart. This was his responsibility, in some circuitous way. And when things blew up in Charles' face, they really fucking blew up. The streets were a pulverized mess, dusted with grey-white plaster. This was supposed to be the future. This was supposed to have been a safe haven; Charles' school writ large. He remembered the fire in Erik's eyes when he liberated this place. He remembered images on the news, meant to scare, of mutants holidaymaking. Mutants taking up labor, construction, ordinary lives, in the millions, here. It wasn't quite what Charles had hoped, but Erik had an excellent response to that: it was _a damn good start_.

Erik staked his life on Genosha. And meanwhile, someone else used his image to commit horrible crimes, against humans, against Charles' students, and now the world was relieved by the idea that Magneto had been put down in New York. Charles knew better, just like he knew perfectly fucking well that the thing in Erik's likeness was not Erik. It couldn't be. He couldn't face the idea of it, and so by a Herculean effort he'd picked up what everyone else missed. A telepathic cry for help on Genosha, directed only at him. Only ever at him.

He'd dropped everything. And everything had been a lot: more mutants were cropping up everywhere, too quickly. His children were in disarray, spread out over the globe. But the yawning gray maw of Genosha was too great a wound to ignore. He drew up a few discreet connections and the plausible excuse of a burial.

So: all this to say that he was exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally, and the terrible likenesses of himself and Erik watched him, and the low sun glared into his eyes, and he still had a ways to go. Still, why out of all people was he imagining _her_?  
"Because I'm the only person in your long history who would both understand why you're here and still judge you for it," Moira responded, striding along his wheelchair. She was incorporeal, a sort of ghost of Christmas past. She had a wicked smile which broke only for the sake of an exasperated expression. "I mean, honestly, Charles. This is stupid, even for you. Even for you when it comes to _him_. Could you really not resist?"  
"You think that this was a mistake? Leaving the X-Men?"  
"I think you need to start being more honest about why you're here."

"I'm still trying to puzzle out why _you're_ here. And it's certainly not to judge me. I can do that well enough on my own."  
"To protect you, then."  
"Or perhaps because every time I see Erik, there has to be a fucking ex girlfriend present."  
Moira laughed at that. "I like that," she said. "I'm your chaperone."  
"Well you're not my fairy godmother," Charles replied, heaving the harnesses attaching his back to the coffin and pressing the electric chair forward. He'd fallen twice now, but nevermind. "Or you'd have given me a carriage by now."  
"You look ridiculous," she said.  
"Yes, well, it turns out coffins rarely come with wheels attached. Let's try not to be ableist, shall we?"  
"I'm just your ego," Moira said, shrugging. "Or was it your id? I'd be much bigger if I was your ego, wouldn't I?"

"Hilarious," Charles muttered, straining. His mental powers picked up some nearby activity. A throwback. He hadn't heard Unus the Untouchable's rather slimy thoughts in years. But there were others, and that made Charles' heart do its best to be light. Wicked and Freakshow, and he liked them straight away. They scattered Unus, and Freakshow ate him, and Charles made his first friends on the island. Children, but friends nonetheless. Wicked could summon ghosts, a power amplified to truly awful proportions by what had been wrought on Genosha, but it still felt like a rose blooming in the rubble when she easily lifted the coffin and marched it ahead of them.

They escorted him the rest of the way to Magneto's hideaway. Well, hideaway seemed a poor word when he saw it. A compound, atop a hill, overlooking the slope of the city down to the water where Charles had arrived.

Unfortunately, because he'd quite like to see Erik meet some charming young survivors, Charles knew it was a bit early to have them meet Magneto. He asked them to come around tomorrow, and they more or less agreed.

And then Charles had only the last few steps to make, and he realized the coffin was being floated for him, and he wasn't ready for this in the fucking _slightest_.  
"You used telepathy to get your way, Charles," a voice said behind him.  
Charles was watching them go. "They were both tired. I just nudged the idea of sleep up a little."  
"You're late."  
"Nice of you to meet me," Charles said sarcastically. "And thanks for the help with the last six meters of the journey."  
Humor wasn't going to save him. Wicked and Freakshow were out of sight. He had to turn around now. He turned, and there Erik was, vaguely apologetic, in jeans and a sweatshirt rolled up to show off his perfect fucking forearms; hair long and swept back with a few strands falling artfully forward like he'd stepped out of a magazine.  
"Sorry, Charles, but you sent them away for the same reason. After everything I've done, I thought it was best to keep a low profile."

Charles was trying to ensure his mouth didn't stay open for too long. When he closed it, it was dry. He shook Erik's outstretched hand, and they both felt vaguely uncomfortable about it as a gesture. After that, though, mercifully, unpacking. Unpacking, and business, and only a few pauses. The place was charming, if noticeably Magneto-decorated, which is to say minimally and with metal furniture.

Of course Charles had a separate room. It would be presumptuous in the extreme not to give him one, and not to mention politically dangerous. In more ways than one, their relationship had always needed a degree of plausible deniability, and now that need was multiplied. And Charles' room was handicap accessible, which was suspiciously premeditated, but he didn't bring it up. Erik excused himself with an almost charming lack of confidence as Charles washed up, and made them dinner. Eventually, though, Charles had to come out.  
Erik was rifling through their supplies, half out of the coffin now and strewn about the living room, trying to get his bearings.  
"I'm sorry I couldn't have brought more," Charles said. "But this is the limit of what I could smuggle in safely."

"I've always been impressed by your resourcefulness," Erik said, and it carried a muted fondness, but Erik wasn't looking at him. He was looking at a sachet of instant coffee, and, fair enough.

"I'm a schoolteacher," Charles said, cheerily. "Even if I wasn't always."  
"We both have shadows on our souls," Erik replied, demur, but something looked wounded for a second, and he changed the subject.  
"Any idea who this is in the coffin?" he asked, rapping his knuckles against it.  
Charles must have winced. "Well... supposedly _you_."  
Erik cycled through a couple things, and Charles wasn't prying, but something approaching a cold dread was building.  
"Ah. Well. How convenient," Erik said. Charles physically stopped himself from reaching out. He reckoned he had one, maybe two mistakes before Erik blew up. Luckily, it was Erik who next managed to plant his foot firmly in his own mouth, by making a joke about Jean that made Charles' heart constrict like he'd forgotten how to send it any oxygen.  
"I--I didn't know," Erik said, and looked thunderstruck. Jean Grey, dead. Killed by Xorn, pretending to be fucking Magneto. It did feel a little like the end of the world. It had to Charles.

"Charles, I'm so _sorry_."

Erik's hand was at his shoulder now, and Charles put his own over it before he thought the gesture through. He spoke before he thought it through, either.  
"She wasn't the only casualty," he said. It was what he kept telling _himself_. Stop moping you stupid bastard, you're not the only person who lost children that day. It wasn't the fucking thing to tell Magneto, but that was hindsight. "The death count in New York was five thousand. Humans, mainly, killed for the sin of being human."  
Oh God, no one had told him. Of course, no one could have told him. This was news to him. Five thousand. Erik looked--afraid.  
"And they think me capable of such a thing?" he asked. The question was to himself and Charles didn't answer. And then: "Do you think me capable of such a thing?"  
No, Charles thought. Never. I love you. "It's just your reputation," he said instead.  
"Not for this!" Erik cried, and the room rumbled with his power. All that dread transmuted into fury because Charles Xavier didn't want to tell the truth. Coward, he hissed at himself.  
"No," Charles said. "Not for this."  
He tried to convey a modicum of his conviction, and obviously some of it got through, because Erik calmed himself down, and then gripped his temple.  
"Are you all right?" Charles asked.  
"Headaches are frequent these days," Erik answered. "Nature's reminder to me to keep my temper."

"You've had them as long as I've known you," Charles said, frowning. "It actually reminds me of something I'd been worrying about. Moira and I--"  
"--Oh, please don't go there," Erik said. "I know you loved the woman, Charles, but my memories of her are not so fond."

"No, I just meant--Christ, why can't I talk today? I meant, you and many other mutants, but you in particular, wield immense power without a commensurate physical strain. It has to catch up. It just has to. Ergo, headaches."  
"You'd think nature would have designed us better," Erik said, getting back to preparing the food. He mentally signaled Charles for a can, and Charles tossed it absently towards the kitchen for Erik's powers to catch.  
"Exactly what I've been worried about, and the troubling answer is: not if we're still a work in progress," Charles said.  
"Homo Sapiens Not-Quite-Superior?" Erik called back, now in the kitchen, visible only through the open wall. Still, Charles could fucking _hear_ the smile. "That's cruel, even for her," he muttered, putting some of the extra cans away in the kitchen's shelves.

Moira's ghost flashed before Charles' eyes again, amused. She had treated Erik horribly, tampering with his free will, it was true. Charles would always care about her, but... less. After that. Less, by a lot. So he banished her again, and tried to put some real conviction behind it. Erik made food, and they sat out on the deck and talked for hours. Something about all of this was so familiar it hurt.

The sun had been in the process of setting for what felt like an eternity, but it never quite got there. Eight. Or four in the morning, according to Charles' body clock. He could see the veins in his arms. He could practically feel the blood flowing sluggishly.  
Erik drank from the glass of wine he'd poured himself. How it was that Erik had found a bottle, exactly, was beyond Charles. Only Erik, in this wasteland, could source a good drink. Or, for that matter, make a good meal. Or look like that.

"It's late, and I'm rather jet lagged. That's quite all right," Charles added, as Magneto pushed his chair back to get up. "I don't need--"  
"--Charles, you spent the day lugging around a metal coffin. Don't be absurd."  
Erik wouldn't hear it. He showed Charles to his room, which would once have had a lovely view of the bay, and the gentle slope of the city down to the water, and Charles was struck suddenly by what it reminded him of.  
"You see it, too, don't you?" Erik asked, following Charles' eyes to the window, and out beyond to the water. "Haifa. It's why I've always loved this bay."  
"And people call me the hopeless romantic," Charles murmured, still watching the sunset. Haifa was where they'd met. It didn't feel like such a long time ago, sometimes.  
"You are," Erik said fondly, hand on Charles' shoulder. "You always have been."  
"With the added implication that my presence here is proof?"

Magneto was silent for a moment, and Charles turned his gaze up and to the side, watching his jaw clench in one of his usual tics.  
"I didn't know whether to beg you to come help, or to threaten you out of it. Charles, you risk quite a lot, being here. And don't give me that look," Erik said, before he even turned his eyes down to Charles. "More than usual. This isn't some consequence-free hour and a half in the astral plane. If anyone learned you were here, even your own children, it would mean--"  
"--I am aware of the political situation around you, Erik," Charles said. "And if anyone asks, you're my cousin."

Erik almost imperceptibly winced. Charles had meant it as a joke, of course, but they weren't quite in synch with each other yet.  
He hated this. He hated the way they always had to try to quietly sound out where they were. All those missed estimates, where Charles would see Erik blow up in his face or Erik would see Charles recoil in anger, or worse, fear. When one couldn't stand to touch the other, or be touched. But sometimes they were quieter, more tolerant, more nostalgic. More desperate, probably, and one would kiss the other and there would be a sigh of relief.  
Erik looked like he might, for a moment, but then he looked away again with a palpable wave of guilt rolling through his mind. Instead, Magneto picked Charles up, which was totally unnecessary, but Charles' arms did ache from the morning. He set Charles on the side of the bed with a practiced, fluid motion and straightened himself.

"Is there anything you'd like to sleep in?" Erik asked, nodding towards Charles' pack.  
"You think I brought pajamas?" Charles asked back, and Erik's lip quirked. Genosha in springtime was quite hot, and there was no air conditioning. Not to mention the fact that Charles smuggled his way in; and had used every possible inch of space on food, water, and medicine. Underwear ought to do perfectly well.  
Erik's powers floated in one of the portable lights Charles had also brought, and set it by the tableside. He drew the curtains closed and flicked the light on from across the room. Charles was expecting him to leave the room, after that. It looked as if Erik expected himself to leave, too, except that instead he knelt in front of Charles and put his hands to the bottom of Charles' shirt, tugging upwards. Charles' hands shot to Erik's wrists.  
"This is a little more help than is strictly speaking necessary," he said softly, and couldn't help the smiling trepidation creeping onto his face.  
Erik looked up, chagrined and adoring, and Charles kissed him.

It started out sweet, happy. Content with itself. They broke after a press together and watched each other again for a moment, and Charles felt them slot into place, minds a little closer, a little more readable. A little less fucking _anxious_. It was such a familiar sight, Erik knelt like this, and before he could help himself Charles threaded a hand through Erik's swept-back hair.  
Magneto's head surged up. They weren't young, they hadn't been young in a lifetime. He had no right to be this sturdy, this--it felt practiced. Erik kissed like an expert.  
"Just with you," Erik said, only pulling back a half an inch. He kissed again, and then backed away. The two warring factions in Erik's mind: a desire for Charles, and a desire to speak, so as to be understood by Charles. "Only you. I--God, do you know how long it's been since I've even _thought_ of anyone else? Casually?"  
"I never really managed that trick, myself," Charles said, and Erik made a gratified noise.

In the morning, Erik made food again, and leaned down to kiss Charles as he took the plates in, and Charles was stupidly, ridiculously distracted enough not to notice Callisto. Her new arms; dozens of long, loping green limbs which carried presumably ceramic knives; held Erik aloft in the living room. She was in an all-black Morlocks look, with the eyepatch and black lipstick to boot. She was a friend. She had saved his life, once, and there were few people Ororo Munroe trusted more, which was just about the most ringing endorsement anyone could receive.  
"C--Callisto?" Charles asked, still perhaps struck a little dumb.  
"What's the deal here, Charley?" she asked, gesturing to Magneto. "You and Magneto have this little caper planned out? Or are you just improvising?"  
"Why are you here?"  
"Officially? Recruiting for the arena. Unofficially it's been a little long for you to be dallying here if you're just burying a body, and Storm sent me to keep an eye on whatever you're _really_ doing. Although," she said, letting Magneto down, "I can see I'm probably not going to want to keep too close an eye. You're supposed to be the brains, Charley. Have you thought this through? Have you considered what will happen if they find you _together_? Not just the X-Men, but the kiddie students?"

Yes. If Charles Xavier was found in Magneto's--well, if he was found here, the entire X-Corp would never recover. Slapped with the charge of aiding and abetting international terror, not to mention the scandal. It would be ruinous. Not for the twentieth time in the last eight hours, Charles listed the consequences he could think of off the top of his head. He was very fucking tired of having to justify his actions. Nevertheless, he would have offered some consolation, when Erik beat him to it.

"I'm trying to do the right thing, Callisto," Erik said. "And so is Charles."  
"Okay, you were _not_ a part of this conversation," she said, pulling her blades back up against Magneto.  
"I'll not fight you," Erik said.  
"Like you'd have a prayer."  
And then, as if summoned by Callisto's scowl, ghosts appeared in the floorboards. Erik stumbled back, shocked and confused, and, oh, Charles realized this might be a bit... Traumatizing.  
"Wicked," he said. "This is her doing. The girl from yesterday. This is her power."  
Callisto dodged out of the way expertly, gracefully, and watching her made Charles feel vaguely old. She hopped out the open door and down off the balcony to the rubble below, and found Wicked.  
Finally, when it was looking like Erik was going to have to intervene, they heard a frustrated tssk and the clang of ceramic knives dropping.  
"Oh, for heaven's sake, you're just a child!" Callisto said, and Charles knew things were going to be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magneto: "Do you think me capable of such a thing?"  
> Charles Xavier you fucking moron he is asking you if you are still capable of loving him, you are literally a telepath with like eight degrees and I'm pretty sure one of them is in Erik Magnus Lehnsherr studies how the _fuck_ did you not pick up on that shit?????
> 
> Excalibur two thousand and four says the inside of Charles Xavier's skull is a hot mess and you know what they really prove it.


	2. Lancelot and his tendency to idealize the man he betrays

\------

"Charles? Are you all right?" Erik asked, plates forgotten, turning the corner from the kitchen to the living room. A cup dashed its contents against the floor in his wake.  
They'd just finished another lunch together, and Erik was really getting the hang of turning the emergency ration supplies into something resembling an acceptable meal. But something had gone wrong. Xavier was having some sort of fit, he writhed in his chair. His arms came up as if to shield himself from something. Not a fit, then. An attack. Erik was at his side in an instant, but he couldn't get Charles to look at him, and Charles was screaming again. Worse than the screams, the look on Charles' face was dragging up something unpleasant, something not-so-dormant in Erik's soul.

\------

"Charles, you need to be smarter than this," Moira said, and Charles could barely hear her through his pain. He was being _murdered_. "Focus. This can only hurt you if you let it. Look. Watch Erik. When has he ever _not_ taken the opportunity to fling himself between you and danger?"  
Charles was in utter agony, but he turned his head as directed. Erik looked afraid and profoundly concerned, yes, but the apparition of Moira was right. Whatever was hurting Charles, Erik couldn't see it. So it wasn't real.  
"Charles, please," Erik said, shaking him again.  
He felt Erik's hands on his shoulders, warm and strong, and it led him to the rest of the real physical sensations. He felt the shirt on his back, the fabric of it, he felt the back of the chair through it. He felt cool metal against his neck. It was as if a switch had been flipped. The apparition was gone, and it left nothing but a headache and a taste of iron in his mouth.  
"What happened?" Erik asked, kneeling at his side still. Charles groaned and straightened, checking his mouth for the blood he was so sure must be there. Nothing.  
"Some sort of psychic attack. I saw an Omega Sentinel. It doesn't bode well, to say the least. God, that was awful. I felt like Prometheus on his mountain," he said, resolving a kink in his neck.  
"Is there anything--can I help?" Erik asked.  
"I think you already have," Charles said in response. Moira's ghost laughed knowingly at him and Charles banished her with a wave.

Callisto returned, having been scouting the island, and Charles described the pain and the confusion to an increasingly overprotective Magneto, who was pacing by the time Charles was finished describing the attack. Callisto brought him some water. Her mind was already racing, tactical and abuzz. Omega Sentinels; grotesqueries of human experimentation, half-Sentinel and half-living but with the soul scooped out; never signalled anything good.

Soon, a crashing sound rocked the sky above the island. A great tearing of metal and engines. A platoon of magistrates; the same that meted out law and enslavement in Genosha before Magneto liberated the place; were falling out of the sky in a crashing helicarrier. One capsule fell, and the jet-packed magistrates dove to retrieve it somewhere in the city. Another fell into the bay, and Charles was already suiting up.

"You can't be serious," Erik said, wry smile on his face, as Charles readied himself. Callisto hoisted him onto her green shoulders.  
"Positively _Pavlovian_ , your response to certain stimuli," Erik muttered, shaking his head. "This predictability will be the death of you."  
There was a real concern under the posturing, but Charles didn't have the time he'd have liked to work through whatever new fears were brewing inside Erik's consciousness.  
"Erik?" he asked instead, gesturing out.  
"Is that an invitation, Charles, or a command?" Charles was not going to be swayed by any light ribbing. Callisto had pulled on a harness to help transport Charles. He ignored Erik for the moment.  
"This is cute," she said, gesturing at the harness cinched on with her green arms.  
"I'm glad it meets with your rather specific approval," Charles said, and Callisto laughed, remembering Charles' only encounter with her fashion tastes.  
He looked back at Erik. "I can't do this alone."  
"Then there's hope for you yet. I'll meet you down there," he said simply.  
Charles nodded curtly.

Callisto took Charles down, and Erik made his own way, faster than they could manage, which was galling to Callisto, but the Wicked and Freakshow were in trouble and Charles sent her off. She was already quite fond, which Charles appreciated. So it was down to Erik and himself to go into the bay, find the downed capsule. Charles had some gear: filtration masks that either Forge or Beast invented, he couldn't remember, and some scuba equipment specialized for him which relied mainly on arms for maneuvering. Erik was watching him, had affixed his gear a little faster.

"I still think the magistrates are the bigger threat."  
"I'm keeping an eye on them," Charles answered, and they dove.

The waters were not as cold as he'd been expecting, and clear, but debris-filled, and they took a while to work their way down to when she'd fallen. On the island, a battle raged, and Charles' nerves were alight when Freakshow came very close to danger, but Callisto swooped in at the last moment. Callisto had all the best instincts, went straight for the capsule. After all, if the magistrates prioritized it... A building fell, but she'd gotten it open to reveal a new element in the fight: a powerful young mutant.

"How are things topside?" Erik asked, as if able to sense Charles' thoughts.  
"Taking a turn for the better. They've found an ally in the other cocoon," Charles said, tuning into Callisto's mind, which was doing a lot at once. "Perhaps in the other one--?"  
The water shifted. The Omega Sentinel from his dreams emerged in a flash of light and air. A woman, Indian, with long, strange hair and wild eyes. Oh, God, what had they done to her? Her legs and arms revealed the metal within.  
"Your nightmare," Erik said. His thoughts added: * _Fortunate that I'm here, old friend, to save you._ *

Sarcastic, but not quite sarcastic _enough_. Erik held out a hand and scrambled the sentinel, who twitched horribly and fell still. Erik recoiled, clutching his head. It was a precision job, a million little things to do in an Omega Sentinel to disconnect all systems at once. And, from what Charles had observed thus far, Erik's emotional state was _severely_ impacting his powers.

"Erik?" Charles asked immediately, but his oldest friend grit his teeth.  
"Don't fuss, Charles, I'm all right. My stamina isn't what it was, nor what I wish it to be, but I've plenty of strength to finish the job."  
Magneto turned his arm back on her and Charles' raced to grab him. "No!"  
He whipped back at that in the water.  
"Don't be a fool, Charles."  
"We can _save_ her."

Even through the water and the mask, Charles could tell Erik's face twitched with that particular Charles-Xavier-annoyance.

"We don't have time for this. She's regenerating as we speak, I don't know if I can take her down as handily the second time."  
"I can feel it," Charles said, clasping Erik's shoulder. "You disrupted the sentinel's control. Her human personality hasn't been erased."  
"Dreamer," Erik levied, pointing a finger. "This is a lost cause."  
"If I had a dollar for every time that was said about Wolverine..." Charles said, tilting his head. "Or _you_..."  
"Idealist, then."  
"What I am, Erik, is _angry_ ," Charles snapped. They hadn't addressed it, and this wasn't the time, but it was never the time. "John Sublime, Cassandra Nova, Bastion, Sinister, Onslaught, Apocalypse, _Xorn_ ," he listed, and could see the knife twist on Erik's face once at Onslaught and once more at Xorn, who had taken Erik's shape. "So many adversaries who used my head and my soul, theirs for the taking, to _hurt my students_. My _children_! Aren't you tired of it?"

Erik had the good sense to remain quiet.

"No more," Charles warned. "I'm done relying on Cerebro, I'm done being weak. I'm done giving people the opening. If I say we need to save her, we _damn_ well need to save her, and don't you _dare_ chalk it up to idealism. I am doing what is _necessary_."

Erik watched him, and they both breathed into their filtration masks for a moment. "You're serious."  
"Completely."

Erik pulled him close with an arm, a gesture something between a handshake and pulling someone up from the ground after they'd been knocked down. It invariably threw Charles back to Haifa, when they'd spend their time in barfights, picking the other up and standing too close for a moment too long. Funny, how Erik had managed to find an intimate moment in the split second they had before they needed to get started.  
"Well then," he said, "she'll have a better chance if we work together."  
Charles pulled her up. She was dense, like Wolverine. Filled with metal and machinery.  
"I haven't seen that kind of fire in you in a long time," Erik said, appreciative. "Any ideas to go along with it?"  
So they were certainly both thinking of Haifa. Charles shook it away.  
"We need to focus on her mind. I can feel that it's still there, but I need a better picture if we're going to wipe the Sentinel without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak."

Erik pulled through with an interesting MRI trick Charles was pretty certain he hadn't seen before but now that he was watching Erik do it he realized he'd used it occasionally in the past to check Charles for injuries.  
"It's not all reversing planetary poles," Erik said.  
Together, Charles drew her mind out and Erik wiped the Omega Sentinel data. It took quite a few rounds, but their powers combined were always electrifyingly well suited.  
"What do you think?"  
"Looks clean to me."  
"Acid test, then."  
And just like that, the woman beneath the Sentinel was free. She broke down, at the bottom of Hammer Bay, looking at herself.  
"What happened to me?" cried Karima Shapandar in horror, and Charles dipped into Magneto's brain just in time to feel something _melt_ , and he tried not to be smug about it.

With Karima and the mutant in the other capsule, as well as Magneto and Charles back in play, the tables had been easily turned. Callisto saved the children, just as competently as she'd freed the mutant, whose name was Shola. Not an Omega Sentinel, but a Genoshan mutant. He'd also been through... a lot. They gathered at Magneto's--penthouse? Fortress? His complex, at the top of the bay. Unus and his people came, too, and demanded that they hand over the magistrates.  
"They'll be dealt with according to the law," Charles said sternly.  
"Newsflash, Chuck. There's no law here."  
"Then let me be the first to establish some," Charles answered, ready. "Do you have a problem with that?"  
Unus looked around. Magneto's slightly-too-approving smile looked downright predatory, and was matched with an even wider one on Callisto's face. Shola seemed a serious sort, and he and Karima stood firmly on the sides of their respective saviors.

Unus' flunkies were a little out of their league, even if none of them seemed to recognize Erik. Amazing what wearing a helmet for a few decades will do. The lad piped down, and they took their leave. They had their own base of operations, of course.

Charles went out onto their back porch, and Erik joined him.  
"Unus didn't recognize you," Charles noted, mildly pleased.  
"See if you can figure out why," Erik replied, and they shared a sort of quiet smile as Erik put a hand to his shoulder and looked out at the unbelievably orange sunset.  
Of course, Genosha's sunsets were only so picturesque because of the particulate still in the air from the destruction, but Charles tried to appreciate their beauty. This was a broken place, but it didn't have to always remain so. He looked up at Erik.

"Make all the pronouncements about laws you want, old friend," Erik said. "You still have to be strong enough to enforce them. And that makes you just another bully. A better breed of Unus."  
"Or Magneto?" Callisto asked, strolling up behind them as she seemed to always be able to do.  
"Or Magneto," Erik agreed with an incline of his head.  
Callisto shrugged. "I could live with that."  
"A benevolent despot remains a despot, Callisto."  
"He means it's not what I wanted for my life," Charles explained. "He's trying to be _considerate_."  
Not everyone understood the half-language of Magneto's emotional blocks. Callisto just tilted her head thoughtfully, but clearly it broke through with Erik, who turned his steel gaze back to Charles.  
"I chide you as a dreamer, and an idealist, and all the rest of it, but in truth I think I'm probably just _jealous_. I've been feared, occasionally respected, but it has to be you. I cannot provide what is required here. You, you always--"  
Erik cut himself off.  
"And I cannot do it alone," Charles said, not for the first time today, and let Magneto's thoughts remain unsaid.

He turned back to the others, who had gathered.  
"Alone, Magneto or I probably could have destroyed Karima, and very likely could have killed the magistrates. Violence and destruction come _easy_. But together, we've found a better way. That paradigm may work as well for a nation as for a person," Charles said, and Erik's gaze shot back to him at the reference to TH White.  
Once, long ago, they'd read The Once and Future King together, and Erik saw himself in Lancelot. Charles saw it too, but saw the message of hope under it. Yes, Lancelot failed his principles, but not before he proved them possible. The bad man, for whom violence is all too easy, can strive to be good, and this makes him a good person in a more profound way. The nation can resist its call to violence, if Lancelot can. Erik looked pained for a moment, and then a hard set came to his jaw. He looked at Charles with a faith and a determination that almost scared him.  
"Will you help?" Charles asked them. That night, they began to build something in the ruins.

That night Erik slunk almost guiltily to Charles' bedroom. The house was full, there was a decent chance someone would notice, and it didn't matter, since Charles could pull Erik into the astral plane just as easily from a few rooms over, but it didn't seem to make a difference to Erik, and there was a sharp reverence in Erik's eyes as Charles pulled him in close. Magneto kissed him, but they were both too worn for anything else. In Erik's head, Charles felt a concerning degree of relief at the idea that he wouldn't be calling shots. That it would be Charles, who seemed so strong to Erik right now, so infallible.

The _something_ being built seemed to quickly settle into a domesticity. Wicked and Freakshow trained with Callisto, and Shola took to rehabilitating himself. Karima stuck awe-struck to Erik, who as always was a big hit with the children as well, after an initial warming period. Callisto dangled lunches cooked by Erik as a prize over the kids' head, and more than once Charles had walked in to find Erik reading to Karima.

Erik had to build, and Charles had to organize, and he found his power multiplying outwards here on Genosha, which meant he could now also contact the Asian branches of X-Corp, which invariably meant _more_ work. But they still had downtime, and Charles liked to take his mornings fairly easy. He was an old man, he allowed himself these things. It helped that Erik followed his example.

They fell back into old habits, and managed the occasional interruption. One morning a week or two in, Callisto came into the room, and her green arm-limbs trailed behind her in an oddly expressive manner. She brewed herself some of Charles' supply of instant coffee, which was not good but certainly very welcome. When she did cast a glance at Charles and Erik, she leaned against the wall and drank.

"This looks... weird," she said.

The two of them were sat across from each other, with a look of extreme intensity, staring at an empty table. Charles hadn't realized.  
"Yes, sorry, here," he said, waving a hand, and Callisto was let into the illusion. Now, atop their table sat a neat little chessboard which was very frustratingly even. Erik considered carefully, and moved his bishop, a favorite piece and a favorite gambit and yet Charles always struggled to counter. Charles couldn't afford to bring a real chess set, not when it was the spatial equivalent of, say, a hundred instant coffees.

"Oh," she said. "Ororo said you two used to play a lot of chess. Honestly, I assumed that was a euphemism."  
"Ha! Perhaps," Erik said, amused but certainly still focused on the board. "But not in the way you think."  
Callisto quirked an eyebrow at Charles.  
"Chess is a game of tactics, and mathematics, but it's really about something else," he explained, and moved his piece.

"War?" Callisto asked.

Charles gestured down to the board. "To win chess, you have to be thinking not just about your current move, but about the next ten. In a game like this, the next twenty, thirty. You have to be able to hold all the possibilities in your head, and the one that does this with the greatest degree of accuracy wins. Erik, right now, is thinking about how I'm going to respond to a gambit he hasn't even set yet. Not that I'm reading his thoughts, of course," he added.  
"It's a game about futures," Erik simplified, moving a pawn. "Whichever of us can predict the future better, whichever of us can _shape_ it better, wins."

"Storm and I just flirt by exchanging knives," she said, leaned against the wall. "Like normal fucking people."  
Callisto left, to return to training the children, and Erik watched her leave as Charles pondered his move.

"She certainly has a way with words."  
"She's a good woman. She saved me," Charles said. "Do you remember? When I was attacked by that mob."  
Charles tossed the memory through their connection, of his waking up in the tunnels and seeing the Morlocks. It was a slight mistake.  
"Good _God_ , is that really how she dressed you?"

Erik looked scandalized, but not entirely for the right reasons. Callisto had thought it would be funny to dress Charles like a Morlock. Of course, for Charles, waking up in someone else's bed with no memories, in skintight leather pants, a choker, some sort of harness top, and more metal spikes than he could count had been... an _experience_.  
"Good _God_ ," Erik muttered. "Fucking Morlocks."  
"Oh, don't start. It was what they had around."  
"You would literally have been thousands of times more modest stark naked. Leather pants and bondage gear are not just _laying about_ , Charles. Callisto's a pervert."  
"And you, of course, show no signs of a rising temperature at the prospect."

"I plead the fifth," Erik said, but Charles caught the flickering look to his lips. In an obvious ploy to change the subject, Erik took up another line of argument. "Besides, _saved_ is rather a strong word. She prolonged your death."  
"She gave me the time I needed to get you back on side, and set the school up to run itself without me."  
"That school did not _run itself_ , Charles, it was a fucking _nightmare_. God, those were the days, though. While you were still around. Your students were terrified of me. I remember when I summoned them back to the mansion, that first time."

Charles was laughing. Erik looked affronted.

"It's too late, Erik," he said, unspeakably fond. "I've seen you with Wicked and Karima, reading to them. You're a--what's the term? A _girl dad_."  
"I am a wanted international freedom fighter," Erik replied, level.  
"And Kitty Pryde still calls you Maggie with zero repercussions, yes?"  
"Pryde is different--"  
"--And Illyana? And Rahne? Dani Moonstar? Don't tell me they don't count, either. You've gone _soft_ , and you went soft ages ago."  
"And you? Callisto's noticed that the stick up your ass has mysteriously vanished. Your prodigious brain dribbles out of your ears whenever you think you've got a decent chance at reforming me."  
"I plead the fifth," Charles replied.

They spent the day on their respective responsibilities, and only met again for dinner. It had finally begun to rain in Genosha, wiping some of that particulate out, and things were peaceful inside despite the storm.

"Where's Ororo when you need her, eh?" Erik asked, gesturing out at the rain. He did seem a little put out that they couldn't enjoy their meal on the deck, as they'd started to get used to doing. He handed Charles a drink.  
"Living a fulfilling life somewhere, probably," Charles answered, taking the offered drink. Erik looked lost in thought, with a lip quirked into a half-smile. "What is it, old friend?"  
"Well, it's just that... you don't suppose Callisto and Storm..."  
"What? Have a--thing? It seems quite infrequent, but Callisto said as much this morning, and it's always been a bit of an open secret."  
"No, no, of course. But, do you think Storm's ever..?"  
Charles skimmed his mind and must have blanched, because Erik laughed. "Just how many of your children are into bondage, Charles?" he asked, laughing to himself. "This is starting to reflect rather badly."  
"Oh that is _rich_ , coming from the man still currently thinking about a choker I wore for thirty seconds, twenty years ago."  
"I only learned about it now. Tell me you kept the choker," he said.  
"Tossed it down a gutter the first chance I got," Charles said. "And I think you'll find your mind down there as well."  
"Ha-ha, Charles."

The irony, of course, was that whatever else Erik was mild-to-moderately _into_ , the one invariable trick was much less predictable, and it was a two-edged sword. And it was bound to happen eventually, it was only a coincidence that it had happened the night before. What Erik _wanted_ , more than anything, from Charles:  
"I love you. Erik, I love you."  
Erik had groaned. It was, somehow, a cheap shot. Same as always, Erik academically understood that Charles was in love with him. All the evidence, all the subtle hints were there. And yet, there was always that little part of him that didn't believe, and that little part caught fire with an audible click when Charles voiced it.  
And Charles, of course, didn't exactly mind the confirmation either, for his own slightly different reasons.

That night, though, it wasn't to be. The second attack on the island had just begun, before Magneto joined him, and Charles woke to lighting and panic, in pink boxers.


End file.
